"Submarines" is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

 (1865-1936), and set to music by the English composer Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

 in 1917, as the third of a set of four war-related songs on nautical subjects for which he chose the title "The Fringes of the Fleet

The Fringes of the Fleet

The Fringes of the Fleet is a booklet written in 1916 by Rudyard Kipling . The booklet contains essays and poems that Kipling wrote about nautical subjects in World War I....

".

Like the others in the cycle, is intended for four baritone voices. It was originally written with orchestral accompaniment, but it was later published to be sung with piano accompaniment.

The composer does not make clear which sections of the song, if any, are to be sung solo or in chorus.

The poem was titled by Kipling "Tin Fish".

Lyrics

The ships destroy us above

And ensnare us beneath,

We arise, we lie down, and we move

In the belly of Death.

The ships have a thousand eyes

To mark where we come...

But the mirth of a seaport dies

When our blow gets home.

External links

• Sea Warfare - The Fringes of the Fleet Notes by Alastair Wilson